Human health / epidemiology

Human health can be affected by exposure to a wide variety of chemicals. Many processes that play a role in the onset of adverse health effects such as immunotoxicity, endocrine disruption, obesity and metabolic diseases, carcinogenesis and reproductive toxicity can be assessed with CALUX® reporter assays. The sensitivity and high-throughput compatibility of these assays makes them suitable both for mechanistic studies as well as screenings of large sample panels.

In many cases, epidemiological studies and monitoring of human health effects are hampered by the limited amount of available sample material (e.g. tissue/blood). In addition, many analytical techniques are costly and time-consuming to perform.

CALUX® bioassays require small amount of material (e.g. 1 ml human plasma for DR CALUX®). Especially in case of larger sample series, CALUX® analyses can be performed in a time- and cost-efficient manner due to the standardized, high throughput compatible assay protocols.

Another important benefit of using CALUX® assays is that they often give mechanistic insight in health effects that may otherwise only be correlated to a certain exposure from a statistical point of view. Typical bioassays used for human monitoring and epidemiological studies are: DR CALUX®, ERα CALUX®, AR CALUX®, PPAR CALUX® and p53 CALUX®. We are experienced with a wide range of human tissues, such as blood plasma, breast milk, tumor tissue and urine.